


vengeful as the gods

by MaddyBee



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, BAMF Sansa Stark, Character Death, Character Study, Dark Sansa Stark, Gen, One Shot, Revenge, Sansa Stark Deserves Better, Sansa Stark-centric, but also just justified sansa, everyone gets what they deserve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:21:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24169513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddyBee/pseuds/MaddyBee
Summary: Sansa Stark is not a victim.She is a survivor.And she is here to make people pay.Or; the five times Sansa dreamt of revenge, and the one time she got it.
Kudos: 65





	vengeful as the gods

1)

Sansa remembers clear as day the first time the idea of revenge clouded her thoughts. It wasn’t when she watched her father’s execution, as she was too busy falling into hysterical grief to think of such things. 

But when Joffrey took her up onto the wall of Traitor’s Walk and showed her Ned Stark’s head, she felt true anger. Hot, all-consuming hatred for the boy in front of her, with his cocky swagger and arrogant smirk and insolent behaviour. She wanted him dead. 

She’d never wanted anyone dead before. 

At least, not really. She was pretty sure there were times in her youth, and especially the past few months, when she thought she disliked someone enough to want them gone. This was nothing like that. This scared her, excited her. The thought of shoving the golden-haired King off the walkway to plummet down to the stone below was clear in her mind, playing through like a dream long after she had been sent to her room that evening. 

This was true hatred. 

He had killed her father, and had loved every second of it. He tortured her mercilessly, each bruise on her skin or cry of pain she released was a win for him, and gods did she want him dead. In the end, though, she was still just a scared young girl, alone in the lion’s den, and the idea of revenge was just a wistful fantasy. She wouldn’t kill him, she knew it. 

When he dropped to the floor at his wedding, blood pouring from his mouth and eyes, veins bulging purple, she was horrified and shocked. She was still not accustomed to the violence of the game for the throne, and it wasn’t until much later, when she thought back on that day as she stared through a window at a view so different from the cesspit of King’s Landing did the thought cross her mind. 

_ I wish it had been me that killed him. _

  
  


\----

2)

The punch to her stomach had her keeling over, and the flat of the sword against her back sent her to her knees. 

When she was younger, she had been obsessed with the ideas of knights. Robb and Theon had often played at being Knights with her as the Queen when they were children, and she couldn’t even recall the amount of stories she’d read of the heroics of knights in her studies with the Septa. Knoble warriors who fought to protect people, who were good and handsome and just. 

Ser Meryn Trant was everything but. 

He was vile and cruel and ugly. His breath always stank when he got close to her, his hands were hard and sharp against her cheeks and her stomach and wherever else King Joffrey let him hit her. Not her face, not anymore.

He wasn’t like her betrothed. He didn’t seem to enjoy punishing her for things that her family had done, he just didn’t care. His face showed total indifference as he battered her around, kicking her like a stray. She didn’t hate him, not in the way she hated the others. She hated what he represented, what he meant. The dissolution of her ideals, the shattering of her childish dreams, the realisation that people would hurt her without thinking twice about it. 

She hated the embarrassment and shame that flooded her cheeks red and sprung tears from her eyes as her dress was ripped from her shoulders for the whole court to see. She hated to think what would have happened to her had Tyrion not walked in, had he not protected her from the careless cruelty of the Knight. 

When she leaves King’s Landing, she doesn’t think of him. He doesn’t haunt her dreams like the others. None of his attacks left scars for her to hide away from everyone around her with long sleeves and high necks. 

Still, all those years later when she is back in Winterfell and Arya casually mentions the way she’d murdered him in a brothel, she can’t help but smile. 

She’d never dreamt of killing him the way she had Joffrey, had simply hoped that one day, he would rot away in a cell or be slaughtered unceremoniously on a battlefield, but the thought still brings her joy.

_ He got what he deserved.  _

\----

3)

Cersei Lannister was a cunt. 

It’s the first time Sansa has ever even thought the word, as it is nowhere near ladylike to utter such words. She doesn’t care so much about being a proper lady these days. The flounces of royalty is all false pretense, marred with deadly smirks and sharp eyes and even sharper whispers. What’s the point?

Yet the lessons are ingrained in her from her mother, her Septa, Old Nan, and now the expectations of everyone in King’s Landing. She is beaten for making wrong moves, so she plays the part of pageantry with her demure smile and averted eyes and graceful curtsies. Sometimes she wonders if they look as fake as they feel, but no one comments so she doesn’t work on trying to make them more genuine.

Cersei is cruel to her whether she simpers or not, so it makes little difference when in the presence of the Lioness. She is cutthroat in a way that Sansa does not know how to deal with, how to predict. 

(Not until years later, when she has learnt the tricks from Littlefinger and Margaery and Olenna and Cersei herself, and is an expert at playing the game.)

There are countless reasons Sansa grows to hate Cersei. Vicious words slurred over cups of expensive wine, clawed hands brushing at her hair with deceptive gentleness, smiles hidden from view as she watches the way her son torments Sansa with a glint of pride. Sansa had been blinded by her beauty and the tales of the graceful, powerful Queen, but the stories don’t match up to the woman in front of her. Oh, she is beautiful, that much is true. From her golden curls to her finely spun dresses and expensive rings, she is every inch the image of a Queen.

But she is calculated, and cold, and Sansa never knows what she is thinking and it scares her. Ever since she ordered the death of her darling direwolf, her beloved Lady, she knew not to trust her. She hated her then, but it was a mere spark compared to the wildfire it grows into with time. For the way she belittled her in the Battle of Blackwater, for the way she pushed for a marriage between her and Joffrey despite knowing her son was a monster.

When Cersei breaks the truce and doesn’t send her army North to help with the battle for survival, Sansa is not surprised. She knows how cruel this woman is. She isn’t even angry because she knew it would happen. 

She is angry when Cersei’s body is found under a mountain of rubble. She feels cheated. She hadn’t been lying when she told Jaime he wanted to see her die, but more than that, she wanted a more fitting death. She had hoped that one of Daenerys’ dragons would burn her alive, or Arya would slit her throat in dark justice for their long-gone relatives that died due to Cersei and her evil mind. Instead, the worst woman Sansa knew got to die in the arms of the man she loved. 

It was like Cersei found the way to have the last laugh, and it riled Sansa up for days. Still, she hoped for one thing if nothing else.

_ I hope she died afraid.  _

\----

4)

When she was 6, her and Theon had married in the weirwood. She had no personal experience of weddings at that age, but she had read and heard enough stories to know that she wanted a marriage more than anything else in the world. 

(Sansa laughs at her naive younger self, now bitter and jaded after two husbands and a body littered with scars.)

Theon had been the perfect candidate for a husband at that age - or maybe he was just more willing to go along with her games than the others. They had said their vows and bowed to each other, then he kissed her cheek like they had both seen Ned do to Catelyn so many times. Then they danced and she sang and they ran around the woods with Robb and Jon and Arya until she tripped on a tree root and he wiped her tears, and made her giggle through the stinging pain. Theon had been the perfect husband.

Then he killed her baby brothers, and Sansa’s heart broke and rage screamed through her body at the betrayal. Stuck in King’s Landing, there was nowhere for her to go to cry and yell as she wished to do, so she stamped down the sorrow and the anger, and grieved in silent solitude. 

It wasn’t often after that that she thought of Theon, but when she did it pained her so. She couldn’t match up the man who killed her brothers - **_his_** brothers \- with the kind and spirited boy she’d grown up with. She didn’t know if their paths would ever cross again, as she knew little of what happened around Westeros - the Lannisters only told her things that would upset her, and Baelish only told her what he thought she needed to know - but imagined he would either retreat to Pyke or be killed in the North. Still, she wished that one day she could see him again, so she could force him to look her in the eyes and tell her why he had done what he had done. _How_ he had done what he had done. 

The pitiful shell of a man she met once again in the halls of Winterfell was not the Theon she had once known, nor the one she had come to hate. Reek was nothing. She still hated him, but a little bit of her, the part of her that was still soft with hope and dreamt for a better life, felt pity for the broken being.

When it was revealed that Bran and Rickon were alive somewhere, she didn’t know how to comprehend the news. Trapped in a tortuous marriage to a psychopath, it was mostly selfish hope for escape that had her forgive him on the spot. Yes, he hadn’t killed her brothers, but he had also turned his back on them, and that warranted her anger. But Sansa was not cruel, and though she was broken in every way right then, she knew that what Ramsay had done to the man was more than punishment enough. 

She no longer dreamt of getting revenge on Theon, not after they survived hell and jumped from the wall hand in hand. He risked his life to save hers, and their reunion later back at Winterfell on the eve of war was filled with shared smiles and light stories, not the demands and anger that she had envisioned before. 

Then he died, and she stared emptily at the flames of the pyre as his body burned among the collection of fallen soldiers. Once upon a time, she had wished the man dead. Now, she wanted nothing more than for him to live. 

_ This wasn’t justice.  _

  
  


\----

5)

Technically, she got her revenge on Littlefinger. 

The problem was, it never felt like she did. 

The man had been playing her for years, had strung her along and sold her out for his personal gain and seeing his blood spill out onto the stone floors of her home should have made her happy. So why didn’t it? 

Arya had slit his throat and Sansa had felt nothing. 

Maybe it was because it didn’t feel like justice, not when the snivelling man had been the very cause of her family's destruction from the second he plotted the death of John Arryn. Whether he had known just how depraved Ramsay was or not, he was the reason for her soul-destroying marriage. He was the one who had tried to destroy the relationship with her sister that was already so unbearably tenuous. He didn’t care who he hurt, who’s body he had to walk over, as long as it got him a step closer to the top of the ladder. 

He deserved worse. 

Maybe it was because she knew that he hadn’t been lying when he said he loved her. He did. He just didn’t know what that meant. He had taught her so many valuable lessons over the years, and she could admit to herself that she wouldn’t survive the coming years if it weren’t for his teachings. She wouldn’t be a player of the game, she would still just be a lowly pawn. A key to the North. A little bird.

He deserved better. 

No. No he didn’t. 

The snow falls in her hair as she stares into the bark face of the Weirwood Tree and she asks it the question running circles through her mind. 

_ So why was it not enough? _

\----  
  


+1)

There were so many thoughts that flitted through her mind as she watched Jon repeatedly ram his fist into the already-bloody face of Ramsay Bolton. The first emotion was horror at the savagery of it all, at the ever growing pool of blood, the noise of bones giving way to the fury of her brother. She was surprised by how quickly that horror dissipated. Although, she probably shouldn’t have been.

Satisfaction, pleasure, fascination - emotions that she never would have thought would be brought forward from such an event. But he deserved it, and she was owed it. She was warranted this cold, righteous revenge on the man who had terrorised and broken her down into some unrecognisable mess of a woman. 

That’s when the next emotion came - jealousy. Ramsay’s life was not Jon’s to take, and her brother seemed to realise this as he suddenly caught sight of her, fist faltering in the air between strikes. Their eyes met for a silent moment, before the man reluctantly pulled himself off the unconscious, half-dead Ramsay. He knew enough about vengeance to know that this wasn’t his killing blow to strike, not unless she asked him to. 

(She knew she wouldn’t.)

She’d never killed someone before, but her husband could barely count as human. Certainly, there was no humanity left in him. 

As his limp body was dragged through the snow, and Jon left to help find survivors in the field, Sansa stood and stared at the blood-soaked ground. So many nights she had dreamt of what she would do to this man if -  _ when -  _ she had the chance, but now that chance was here and she wasn’t sure what to do. 

Part of her wanted to torture him, expose him to just a fraction of what he had put her, and Theon, and so many countless others through. Flaying him would be incredibly poetic. However, she knew she couldn’t, as satisfying as the thought was. She would not stoop to his level. 

No, she wanted him dead, but a sword or an arrow was too swift, too merciful a death for this despicable creature. She needed something more personal, an insult to him and his imagined invincibility. It was an hour or two later, when she was helping organise the wounded in the hall when Ghost crept to her side with a nudge of his nose against her hip and the thought came to her.

The smile on her face was not that of Sansa Stark, the highborn lady who dreamt of princes and pretty things, but the wicked smirk of a hardened woman, with an icy soul and a thirst for retribution. 

x

There was no one else in the courtyard, only the flickering glow of torches to keep her company as she approached the kennels. Everyone else was inside the castle, either participating in the ramshackle celebratory feast or working to patch up the crowd of injured men. She would join the celebrations soon, after she took care of Ramsay. 

He was tied to a chair, still coated in blood as he sat in the centre of the kennels. She wasn’t sure how long she stood and watched him, the cold wind the only thing that kept her grounded as she waited patiently. It would be worth the wait.

When he finally stirred in his chair, she felt a thrum of something in her veins. Excitement? Adrenaline? Trepidation? Whatever it was, it took her over as Ramsay coughed and groaned, lifting his mangled face to greet her with a cocky facade. 

“Ah. Sansa. Hello, Sansa. Is this where I’ll be staying now?” 

A pause as he took in her emotionless expression, the strength of her posture.

“No. Our time together is about to come to an end. That’s all right. You can’t kill me. I’m part of you now.”

As she stared at the man who had almost broken her, she felt no emotions, no remorse for what she was about to do. 

“Your words will disappear. Your house will disappear. Your name will disappear. All memory of you will disappear.”

His infuriating smirk dropped from his lips as a low growl followed her stoic words. As if on cue from the gods, the dogs chose that moment to investigate the man, their master, that had been presented to them. They circled him, sniffing the air that was pungent with blood, menacing growls piercing the quiet of the night. 

“My hounds will never harm me.”

Sansa almost smirked, still staring at the man who was about to learn his lesson. “You haven’t fed them in seven days. You said it yourself.”

Ramsay stilled, all traces of bravado gone from his face. “They’re loyal beasts.”

“They were,” she corrected in her unwavering voice. “Now they’re starving.”

That was the moment he began to realise the severity of the situation. Sansa could only watch in vicious glee as he swallowed roughly, wary eyes fixed on the dog that was now sniffing at his feet. She could see his breathing quicken as the panic flooded him, felt her own heart pick up the pace as the starving hound rested it’s great paws on Ramsay’s knees to sniff at his face. 

She had dreamt of revenge for so long, and now as Ramsay’s screams filled the air as his own dogs ripped him to shreds, she felt like laughing. Their teeth tore into him, feasting on his flesh in an agonising death for a vile man. She went to turn away as the dog clamped his jaw around the man’s cheek, but couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to look away. It wasn’t as if death or gore could disturb her anymore, not after everything she’d seen over the years. 

So she watched in morbid curiosity as he continued to howl despite the chunks of muscle and skin that had already been ripped from his face and throat. All the times he had made her scream in pain, and now she was finally able to return the favour. 

As his yells began to peter out under the cacophony of barking, Sansa finally turned and walked away. Finally, she thought. And if a satisfied, malicious smile pulled at her face as she walked back towards the castle, then all it signified was a new beginning for a woman who was finally free.

_ This was revenge. _

**Author's Note:**

> This is me getting back into Game of Thrones with a little piece about a badass woman and the people who tried to ruin her. (I also forgot that she did kill and get revenge on Petyr until I'd already written the rest of it, and I couldn't think of anyone else to use so i just went with it, just pretend it works, ok?) ((I also am eternally happy that Sansa outlasted all of them.))
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


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